Ian Crockatt, a member of Scottish PEN, lives in North Aberdeenshire, and has published a number of collections of poetry. 'Emily Dickinson in Love' is from his collection 'Blizzards Of The Inner Eye' (Peterloo Poets 2003), and is also one of a series of 42 sonnets published separately under the title 'The Lyrical Beast' (Salix Publications, 2004).
Emily Dickinson In Love
I see it like this – a rock arrives
on her front porch and puts on a display
of pyrotechnics as stupendous as the Northern Lights
then rolls on its way, having first contrived
a trail of poppers and fizzers as its finale.
Or some snake trances new patterns in the grass
on a day so still a spinster can hear
her heart making boom down the valley.
How many times must she hear it
before night arrives with the chloroform,
or the snake unstraps its chainmail
and heads off home? How can she bear it
when that plank in Reason gives way
and plummets her 10 floors down into poetry?
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